Saving the world, one ticket at a time.

From Off-Site

Because clueless HR reps and unethical businesses pulling H-1B Visa scams to the tune of “we have to outsource, we can’t find anyone local” are doing shit like this. I’ll do the counting for you – that’s 38 certifications.

Credit to Per Christensson here for this completely random explanation.

What does “J” mean in e-mail messages?

Answer: If you’ve ever received an e-mail with a mysterious “J” in the body of the message, you may have been perplexed by its meaning. Some messages have a single J, while others have several. Most J’s appear at the end of sentences, but they can appear anywhere in the message So what does this enigmatic character mean and why does it show up in e-mail messages?

The J is actually supposed to be a smiley face.

If you have Wingdings installed on your computer, the following character will appear as a smiley face. Otherwise, it will be the letter “J”: J

This is because the letter J represents a smiley face icon in the Wingdings font. Microsoft Outlook, a popular e-mail client, automatically converts the : ) and : – ) text emoticons into smiley face icons using the Wingdings font. Therefore, when Microsoft Outlook users type smiley faces in an e-mail message, they are sent as visual smiley face icons.

The smiley face icons show up correctly on most user’s computers, since most Mac and Windows-based machines include the Wingdings font. Most modern e-mail programs also support formatted text, including custom fonts. However, if you don’t have the Wingdings font installed or your e-mail program or webmail interface does not support formatted text, the smiley face will show up as a “J”. Also, if a message has been forwarded several times and one of the users in the forwarding chain could not view the smiley face correctly, it will be transmitted as a “J” to all future recipients. Therefore, you may occasionally see “J’s” in your e-mails, even if your computer and e-mail program supports the Wingdings font.

Hopefully, now when you go back and look at your messages with mysterious “J’s”, they will make sense in the context they appear. It should also be easier to interpret future occurrences as well.

Known issues in this update

Update installation may stop at 99% and may show elevated CPU or disk utilization if a device was reset using the Reset this PC functionality after installing KB4054022.

Note This workaround uses c:\temp and the x64 architecture as examples. Update these examples as appropriate for your environment.

Download the appropriate version of KB4054022 for your device architecture from the Microsoft Update Catalog to c:\temp. Then run the commands in the steps below from the administrative command prompt.

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

Windows Update History reports that KB4054517 failed to install because of Error 0x80070643.

Even though the update was successfully installed, Windows Update incorrectly reports that the update failed to install. To verify the installation, select Check for Updates to confirm that there are no additional updates available.

You can also type About your PCin the Search box on your taskbar to confirm that your device is using OS Build 16299.125.

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

When calling CoInitializeSecurity, the call will fail if passing RPC_C_IMP_LEVEL_NONE under certain conditions.

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

Due to an issue with some versions of Anti-Virus software, this fix is only being made applicable to the machines where the Anti virus ISV has updated the ALLOW REGKEY.

Contact your Anti-Virus AV to confirm that their software is compatible and have set the following REGKEY on the machine
Key=”HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”Subkey=”SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\QualityCompat”
Value Name=”cadca5fe-87d3-4b96-b7fb-a231484277cc”
Type=”REG_DWORD”
Data=”0x00000000”

How to get this update

This update will be downloaded and installed automatically from Windows Update. To get the standalone package for this update, go to the Microsoft Update Catalog website.

Note: On the catalog website you will also see the update for Server 2016.

If you recently upgraded to a new Windows 10 version such as the Fall Creators Update, you might be facing a very annoying problem. If you restart your machine, after boot screen an error message is shown: “The user name or password is incorrect. Try again.“. The strange thing is that the error message is shown before Login Screen (also known as Sign-in Screen or Welcome Screen). So even if you didn’t enter any username or password, you get this error message first. Once you click on OK button, you get the Login Screen to enter correct user name and password and then Windows allows you to sign-in successfully.

It happens due to a new feature added to Windows 10 newer versions which is called “Improved Boot Up Experience”. Microsoft has implemented a new functionality in Windows 10 newer versions which allows Windows to use your sign-in info to apply settings after a restart or update. This feature automatically finishes setting your Windows 10 device after an update is installed and your machine is restarted.

Here is the official explanation of this new feature according to Microsoft:

The advanced Windows Update feature to use your sign-in info to automatically finish setting your device after an update has been extended to regular reboots and shutdowns. When you log in and initiate a reboot or a shutdown through power options available on the Start Menu and various other locations, Windows will automatically setup your account after it has booted back up.

This will help you sign-in faster and will restore your accessibility applications and any other application that has registered for application restart.

This feature was added first to Windows 10 build 16251.

Microsoft has provided an option to enable/disable this feature. You just need to use following steps:

1. Open Settings app from Start Menu. Alternatively, you can press WIN+I keys together to open Settings directly.

2. Now click on Accounts icon in Settings app and then click on Sign-in Options tab present in left-side pane.

3. Scroll down to bottom and you’ll see “Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device after an update or restart” option. This option would be set to ON.

Click on the toggle button and set this option to OFF.

That’s it. Now restart your computer and you’ll never see the irritating error message about incorrect username or password unless of course you manually enter a wrong password.

My usual tech news sources haven’t done a very good job at keeping me up-to-date about Marea, which is surprising considering how drastically it’s going to affect the lives of the people on either end of the cable. Here’s Microsoft’s live page of the latest on Marea: